Welcome to SolidPlanning.com. Solid Planning is a site where our dreams, strategies, and hard work are combined to produce tangible results. On this site we will review books, tips, tricks, and strategies, looking for ways to build our plan to meet the 2009 goals posted in the far right column. As we make progress we'll bring you along with articles and stories on this site. We welcome your suggestions and feedback along our journey so please feel free to leave comments!

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Jan 18, 2009

Our cable company has an offer which includes phone, cable, and high speed internet for $109.00 per month. This caught our interest since we have been sending them $140.00 per month for just about 2 years now. A quick review of our bill shows a the base fee of $113.00 plus some additional fees for DVR Service, 7.95, and DVR Smart Box, 6.95. The remaining difference includes taxes and fees. We called the company to see what the difference was in service. No Difference!!! The agent indicated this price is only for "New Customers". We let the subject drop however we hinted that we may cancel service. He did not flinch.

The thought of getting ripped off has been bothering us so we went online to check the facts. Via the internet you can purchase the same package for $99.95. That's a $13.05 per month savings with no change at all.

Motivated by our find we decided to see if we can purchase a DVR to save the $6.95 per month as well. We found the exact model we currently use on eBay for $50.00 plus $14.80 in shipping. It gets better..... Prior to finding this listing we received a pop up for a 10% savings if we use paypal to make the purchase. We could not resist. The box and shipping ran us $59.80.

So here's the plan. We'll call the cable company and tell them we want the $99.95 deal. If they say no we'll tell them to cancel my service and to schedule service for a new customer the same day. (We have one concern, is there an installation fee?)

If there is no installation fee, and if the cable company goes for the switch, and if we can use the box we'll enjoy a three month payback on the DVR. Then we can bank $20.00 per month of true savings. That's $240.00 annualized and nothing to sneeze at.